


Back and Forth (Because, This Time, I Know Better Than You)

by Toxic_Waste



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Bodyswap, Dimension Travel, Gen, Post-Season/Series 04, Pre-Canon, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:27:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22204810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toxic_Waste/pseuds/Toxic_Waste
Summary: Things are happening. They are happening quickly. Or they were: and they culminated into the grand dead end. Beast Island, the end of the line, the final stage, the ultimate crescendo in Entrapta's rapidly disintegrating world.She's a believer in things she can see, and feel - and poke and prod and test. In science, above all. Friendship wasn't one of those things, but she gave it a chance, because who is she to say 'no' to something new?If only there was a way she could change that now.
Relationships: Adora & Entrapta (She-Ra), Bow & Entrapta & Glimmer (She-Ra), Catra & Entrapta & Scorpia (She-Ra), Entrapta & Emily, Entrapta & Hordak (She-Ra), Entrapta & Imp (She-Ra), Entrapta & Micah (She-Ra)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 22





	1. Chapter 1

Everything was still on the outskirts of the Dryli Mountains, desolate as it had been for probably hundreds of years at this point. There was a lone path out here, winding it’s way through scraggly trees, clinging to life among the sea of rocks and boulders that made up the cliffsides, nearly bent double from the ceaseless winds howling through the canyons.

There were still signs of better times lingering on the ancient trail. Cracked and worn stones too smooth and regular to have been anything other than ancient paving-stones, rusted-over signposts occasionally lying half-buried under a pile of debris, and at one point even a collapsed structure in a flattened area that might once have been a rest stop - once, in a time where a rockslide hadn’t crushed the roof in and all but finished the process of the building’s reintegration into the natural state.

The wind howling ensured that it was never  _ quiet _ out here, but human voices were rarely heard anymore. Rarely, but not never… and today was one such moment.

It had been seven months - seven months, three days, four hours, and thirty-seven minutes, to be precise - since Entrapta had stepped foot outside the Crypto Castle. She didn’t miss it, to be honest, and it took all of one of those minutes for her to remember just why she never came out here.

Still, being a scientist was never going to be  _ easy _ , and for that reason, she was hardly begrudging of the situation anyway. For the past few weeks, she’d really been going off on this shtick around the ancient technology remnants left behind by the First Ones.

She’d dabbled in the stuff before, though never too much: as a rule, it was generally extremely hard to find in any significant quantities, and if you  _ did _ find a large piece, it was just as likely to be corroded and worn down into nothingness; nothingness suited only for display as a piece in some boring museum.

The First One’s tech was, incredibly advanced and it tended to have built-in anti-aging systems too, but not even tech like that was entirely immune to the passage of time. Especially not a thousand years of it. Most of the First One’s tech left near the surface by this point had been weathered down into smooth pieces of glass. The stuff that was still usable was often buried deep beneath the ground, where finding it was more of a hit or miss than anything.

Entrapta had had blueprints for a really big,  _ really _ powerful tracker that would be capable of sniffing out this stuff for a really long time, actually. She’d just never gotten around to putting them into practice without getting distracted: they would require a whole lot of power of a very specific and carefully controlled sort of current - so she’d have had to build a whole new generator room, probably… and, well, she wasn’t opposed to the idea, not inherently, but every time she went down to get her tools, it was just too hard not to be struck by another idea and then the urge to do that instead would just be too strong to resist.

Then there had been the earthquake. 

Earthquakes weren’t  _ entirely _ uncommon up and down the mountain range. They weren’t even real ‘earthquakes’, strictly speaking; but occasionally a really bad storm would whip up and there would be a mudslide or a rockslide or an avalanche - the shaking of thousands of tons of rock and dirt and snow moving at a hundred-and-twenty miles an hour down a slope was enough to knock Entrapta off her feet if she happened to be standing on them, and the sound produced would be as loud as thunder and could be heard reverberating up and down the mountain range for minutes after the shaking stopped.

The most recent one had been particularly bad, too, coming right in the midst of one of the worst storms in recent memory. The Castle itself had sustained some pretty heavy damage during the storm, but to be honest, Entrapta hadn’t gotten around to fixing up much of it, not yet. Primarily because the First One’s tech tracker she  _ did _ have - the small one - had abruptly began going off with a new signature right in the heart of where the avalanche had been.

Thousands of tons of rock had been upset, revealing layers below - and, apparently, something beneath had been uncovered. This was actually really exciting. Entrapta had been out all over these mountains over the past twenty years, and had pretty much scoured them clean - at least the places near enough the surface.

Equipped with a shovel, pickaxe, and a backpack full of random other supplies - including a bag full of miniature cakes - she’d set out as soon as she woke up that day. The sun was just setting, apparently - well, she preferred nighttime to daytime anyway. The sun was just…  _ too _ bright. There was a reason the Crypto Castle had no windows. 

It had taken about two and a half hours to navigate the sheer slopes and cliff faces of the mountain range, following the signal on her tracker-pad all the way. It really  _ was _ a treacherous and unfriendly course - filled with deathly sharp rock spires and hundred-foot gorges that yawned out of nowhere, as if threatening to swallow up any who dared attempt passage.

Anyone except Entrapta, that is. Her hair reached from rock to ledge to rock, sliding into the cracks and crevices and anchoring itself as she carried herself across the landscape, with only a single break for snacktime atop one of the lonely peaks.

The night sky stretched above her, dull and dark, an endless sea of inky soup that seemed to stretch on forever and ever. A lone one of Etheria’s moons was in phase tonight, and it was only hanging just above the horizon. Entrapta stared up into the sky, passively wondering just far it stretched anyway.

It really was such a grand puzzle, wasn’t it? Where it had all come from?

Nibbling idly on a tiny cupcake, she stared more. There was nothing out there - and she knew from experience, having once sent a flying camera as far into the upper atmosphere as she could. So far, in fact, that it’d escaped from Etheria’s gravity and had entered a geostationary orbit for a good decade before it had eventually deorbited and crashed down to the surface again. (Who knew where it had landed?) 

But there was  _ nothing _ out there, nothing save for specks of dust that probably came from Etheria anyway. How could a planet just pop into existence from nothing? It didn’t make sense. The First Ones had come from  _ somewhere _ , after all.

She continued mulling over this train of thought even as snacktime finished and she resumed her trek towards the signal.

It had been roundabout a millennium since the First Ones had been here in person. This was easy enough to demonstrate. Radiation dating on the bits and pieces of technology and other ruins they left behind confirmed that: some stuff she’d found had seemed as old as twice that, but she’d never found anything that dated as younger than nine hundred and ninety-three years, and that piece was so small that the results were pretty doubtful anyway.

Maybe she was thinking about it the wrong way, though: maybe the First Ones hadn’t come through  _ space _ after all, especially not if there seemed to be nothing out there.

There were other dimensions to travel through - or, well, one other. Time. 

That was possible, right? Theoretically. It would take a  _ lot _ of energy, but if you managed to hook up a couple of those rumored runestones, maybe, then figured out a way to accelerate a vehicle to a hyperluminal pace… it might rip the fabric of existence apart, actually, but there was also about a thirty percent chance that it would let you time travel, too. Either instead of or alongside the whole ‘ripping the fabric’ thing.

(The laws of thermodynamics could be such spoilsports sometimes.)

For a long time her thoughts idly meandered this way and that down that path, all the way until the beeping of her pad quickened in her hands, gaining a sort of frenetic quality - and she stood before a huge, recently upturned pile of rocks and soil and splintered trees that marked the trail of an avalanche.

The one moon was high in the sky by this point. Following her tracker into the rubble, she at last found a nondescript place where the signal seemed strongest, and, producing her tools, began to dig.

The signal only strengthened as she got farther and farther down, and her excitement grew higher with every foot deeper she went. Until, at last, her shovel clanged on something harder than just mountain granite and a shiny bit of metal landed in her waste heap.

Instantly she was on it, churning through the dirt with her hands like a turbine going through a liquid -- churning, churning, churning, until her gloves brushed against it and her fingers closed around a hard, cross-shaped piece of metal.

Lifting it out of the dirt, she gently blew it off.

It was… it was some kind of chip or circuit. Four points, one in each direction, and intricate engravings running all across its surface.

Her tracker was going nuts by now: clearly this was it. The jackpot.

It was  _ big _ , too, nearly the size of her palm. She could hardly believe her luck. The chunk of glass and metal practically hummed with pent-up power - or, at least, it would once she connected it to some electricity.

It was a beautiful sight, for sure.

The trip back to the Crypto Castle was one taken at as rapid a pace she could manage, swining from rock to rock and ledge to ledge like one unconcerned with life itself. The distant horizon was just beginning to color itself with with hints of orange daylight as the castle’s gates closed behind her. Dancing among the tripwires and pressure-plates, she navigated the courtyard’s maze of traps - a pitfall, two dart-launchers, and a handful of flamethrowers. 

The sky overhead at last returned to the much more familiar ceiling of stone looming overhead. Sliding through the vents, she tumbled out into her lab into a heap. Her eyes sparkled like a welding torch behind her mask. There was just many possiblities, and she couldn’t  _ wait _ to get to them all.

Radiative dating pegged an age of roundabout twelve-hundred years, which she dutifully recording, noting that the average age had dropped to thirteen-forty-seven years now. Significant? Not likely.

Perhaps she could use this to upgrade her robots, then - give her castle’s mainframe an upgrade that she had been meaning to get around to for a long while now.

Her hand paused a mere inch before depositing the four-pronged chip into the receptacle of the mainframe. This… well, this  _ would _ work, of course, but there was something else she was curious about, too. (Not that that was a very high bar - she was curious about most everything, in the end.)

Still. Turning about on her hair, she instead paced over towards a different console, her contemplations of earlier coming back to her. If the First One’s reached Etheria through time travel (perhaps coming from the future to settle the past, or even from the past to settle the future, as if fleeing from some intervening apocalypse?), then it stood to reason that she could do the same, too. If one person could do it, then so could another. Such was the way science worked.

Her prototype for a hyperluminal particle accelerator had been a great success, but it had never had enough power, either. She’d already erected a whole ‘nother fusion reactor, but that had only overloaded the circuits instead. Perhaps with this new First One’s chip, though… maybe it would be enough to let her pump enough power without burning anything out. It made good enough sense, after all, and she could always upgrade her robots another time.

Slotting the chip in, she set about to booting up the machine.

The chip took, and by that, it  _ took _ , seeming to anchor itself with some kind of grow or extrusion. She noted this, speculating at length into her recorder if it was perhaps some sort of automatic locking mechanism. It looked almost biological, which wouldn’t be entirely surprising, if she knew anything about the First Ones.

Regardless, it was really anchored in there now.

“Test one,” she declared aloud. “With the new modifications to the hyper-dynamo. The hypothesis is that with this chip as a capacitor, more energy should be able to be safely directed into the drive. Unlike last time.” She reached up and, wrinkling her nose, lightly brushed a dark scar sprawled underneath her left eye. “In any case, I’m going to keep my mask engaged anyway.”

The recorder clicked off and she set about to the switchboard. The whole thing vibrated beneath her hair as she re-directed the castle’s power supplies one by one. The lights in the lab went out, but it didn’t matter - the dynamo was glowing so brightly now that they weren’t even needed.

The First One’s chip whined and whirred, beginning to pulsate an eye-hurting shade of red as the whole accelerator practically lifted itself from the floor. The red tentacles emerging from the chip grew thicker and wider, piercing the metal exterior and sinking beneath. Entrapta instinctively took a step back, holding her hair protectively in front of her.

Lightning sounded  _ inside _ her lab, shaking bricks from the walls and rupturing the concrete floor.

Entrapta clicked her recorder, trying to shout over the cacophony as she watched, enraptured.

“It seems to be entering a self-sustaining state! Maybe I should have conducted this test outside! Though it’s possible that-- whoa!”

A bolt of light so brilliant and pure streaked from the heart of the machine, landing on her left pigtail and instantly burning the hair apart where it lay. Entrapta jerked herself violently out of the way, dropping her recorder to the floor.

The roar was too loud to hear herself think over. The glow was actually painful to even exist in the presence of. The heat broiling off the machine was beginning to make the ends of her pigtails turn brown.

It  _ did _ then -- did leave the floor, rising about a foot into the air. Entrapta’s jaw fell open behind her mask.

That was when the pull came.

It was like a roaring wind, a cyclone, a whirlpool. It grabbed ahold of her all at once, relentless.

Entrapta shouted in surprise, her hair flailing out in all directions in an attempt to anchor herself. Two bricks she grabbed, one lever mounted into the floor and three of the ceiling rafters. 

The bricks gave way first, the entire wall groaning as cracks manifested in it’s surface. The lever snapped off, and she let go, watching as it tumbled away into the awful bright supernova, disappearing into the terrible brilliance with a roar that penetrated even through her ear protection.

“It’s trying to fuel itself!” she gasped aloud. “The chip is keeping the circuits from burning out, but I still didn’t supply enough power! It’s  _ eating matter _ !”

It almost didn’t matter that she shouted it. No one could have heard it anyway.

She willed her hair to grip tighter to the jostling rafters, trying her best to pull herself away from that gravity pulling so relentlessly.

Her shoes came clean off, tumbling away.

Her hair … would be fine. It wouldn’t  _ break _ … but she wasn’t so sure about the rafters. If she continued clinging, there was increasing chance that she’d bring the whole roof down on top of her. That wasn’t going to be an ideal ending, not for her lab, and not for herself, either.

The rivets were straining now, the metal unwinding itself out of the stone it rested in. Entrapta frowned, gritting her teeth. There was nowhere to go - nowhere to reach, and she didn’t know how much longer it would be safe to keep hanging on.

She took a sidewards glance at the all-devouring point of light behind her, watching it roar with an unabated fury, swallowing up all the loose garbage that it could muster.

The heavy monitor on the far side of the room began to move.

Something  _ popped _ , and her rafter abruptly tore out of the roof.

Entrapta screamed, but it wasn’t even audible. She flailed for something to anchor, but there was nothing half so sturdy as that rafter had been. She caught one last glimpse of the roof of the lab sagging inwards before an interminable heat swallowed her up and the whole world went brilliantly, painfully white.

It lasted forever. Or only a split second. In the future, she wouldn’t be able to recall which - not with any certainty.

But it was  _ over _ , and the heat was replaced by a chill and the light winked out and she went sailing through the air, slamming her back against a tree, gasping as her wind was knocked clean out, sliding disoriented and dizzy to the muddy ground.

Her head was ringing and the branches above her seemed to sway and ooze back and forth. The black night sky was full of white pinpricks.

Entrapta groaned.

She’d dropped her tape recorder at some point, and the backup one. 

Pulling out her backup backup, she clicked the button woozily. “Day seven hundred and twenty-two, hour… I don’t remember. I… I am having trouble regaining my motor functions. I’m going to have a  _ splitting _ headache tomorrow morning.” She blinked, waiting for the branches above her to slowly recombine into the single one they actually were.

Sitting up, she heaved for breath, wiping her face with a muddy glove and collecting her balance about her again before standing to her hair.

The sky was still full of pinpricks.

Entrapta blinked, gasped, and fell over again.   
  


* * *

Everything  _ seemed _ still on the horizon of the abandoned island, but Entrapta’s ears were too sensitive to be fooled. Though nothing moved, not exactly - aside from the wind rustling through the leaves now and then - there was a low, but constant… humming sound that seemed to pervade everything with a uniquely alien aura.

The night was loud with the noise of life, yet there was no sign of  _ civilization _ anywhere to be found.

Well, aside from that which was around her feet. A considerable number of signs were  _ there _ , in the form of trash, and a whole basketload of it. More than a ‘basket’, actually… it looked to be enough refuse to to account for the entirety of the Horde itself over the past week or so. It stretched very nearly from horizon to horizon - only by squinting and raising herself farther in the air could she see where the garbage dump ended and the bland, rocky-colored beach sand began.

_ There must have been some mistake _ , she reasoned; upon having attempted to recall some of the events of days prior and finding her recent memories oddly fuzzy and warped. It was like there was some physical barrier in her mind. But the sensation itself was none too strange to her. She’d probably just gotten conked real good across the back of her head (a place she hadn’t ever taken the time to armor up, since it usually seemed so unlikely to happen.) 

Still, getting her memory temporarily based out of her brain by some explosion was nothing new to her. As long as she sat patiently enough, it would come back to her. It always did. 

She kicked enough garbage aside to coil her hair beneath her and form a makeshift seat. Pulling out her tape recorder, she flicked through it, settling on the most recent tape. Her own voice came urgently out of the little machine.

“Portal experiment seven-seventy-two,” Past Entrapta said. “Catra brought the sword. It seems to have a sort of wireless reaction to the rest of the portal circuits. This must mean that the basic components of the device is built correctly. If not  _ sustainable _ , the portal should at least be  _ sustainable _ . I’m not sure what the sword is made like to enable this functionality, but this - combined with the fact that I’ve seen change physical from - gives me some ideas. If my calculations are correct, it won’t be needed once the portal is self-sustaining, so I should be free to take it apart and check its guts.” 

Entrapta frowned. Yes, yes, she remembered all that. Holding the fast-forward, she resumed again a short while later.

“The sword seems to be a wireless conduit of some kind. Which makes sense. I’m picking up immense quantities of quark radiation passing through it. Neutrino incidentivity is at an all time time - nearly one part per billion. I’m reminded of the experiments with the Black Garnet… the runestones must be the source of this, yes. The sword must have been designed to choke their radiative output down to a single conduit, thus exponentially increasing the strength of it. I can’t quite be sure how this works without seeing it more closely, but my hunch is that it has something to do with resonant and/or harmonic frequencies. Based on past data, that seems at least fairly likely.”

Entrapta nodded, the voice of her past self filling the still unclear details in her mind. Of course, yes. Her eyebrows suddenly raised. Hordak.  _ Hordak _ . He was… a lot less sturdy than she’d realized, and if she was… somewhere(?), he might not be able to handle things without her.

Now here was a concern. She fast-forwarded the tape again.

“Adora has raised an interesting point, at least according to the data,” her past self’s voice inflected thoughtfully, echoing in that strange way that could only be caused by being inside a ventilation shaft. “She predicted that the portal be disastrous in some way - well, we are running with any sort of backup system for power discharge, but I hadn’t thought about it before now. I’d figured that we could shoot any excess power back into the atmosphere or something? But preliminary simulations now are saying that might not be as feasible as I’d thought. It could be too much, even for the insulating factor of an entire atmosphere. Wouldn’t that be something?” Her voice trembled a bit with excitement. “It’s so  _ cool _ ! I always knew the runestones were powerful, and combined, of course… and it makes sense, compressing all that radiation down to a single point… think of one could do with this kind of power? It’s almost too much to consider through normal terms. I think it would begin to interact with spacetime on a discrete, quantum level, almost - well, yeah, the portal kind of relies on that, but... “ she paused. “It could actually feasibly cause an issue or two, Releasing that kind of energy just - into the atmosphere at random… well, I’m going to run a few more simulations on it before I turn the portal on, I think. It should only take a minute or two, and it  _ would _ be unfortunate to rip the planet apart by settings off an exothermic reaction on a grand scale… I’d never get to finish my other experiments, either. Hmm.” A metallic clanking came from the background of the tape. “I’ve just arrived at the main diagnostic room for the left side.I’m going to run a few simulations with greater detail, with various specifications. Will update later with reports.”

The tape died then. There were no reports.

But of course there weren’t. And there needn’t be, either. Her own mind was clearing now, the effects of her spate of unconsciousness vanishing, and it provided all the rest of the details that she needed. 

All the rest of the details that she would ever need.

The simulation, the door. Catra and Scorpia. They were Hordak’s underlings, but they weren’t always as understanding as he was about these very complex subjects. They insisted she go ahead with things, but she had refused. She’d need to speak with Hordak again - he’d definitely understand, and then revise his orders to his underlings, too. 

She didn’t know what had made her turn around on foot. Any other time she’d have shot her hair towards that ventilation grate and yanked herself up inside before you could say ‘lickety-split’. It was her preferred method of transport, to a pretty significant degree… but she was familiar with the Fright Zone now. She knew where Hordak was, and it would be nominally quicker on foot.

She’d turned her back, and that had been… that. Now she could remember that, too - the electricity coursing through her nervous system, freezing her in place and dragging her inexorably towards the murky grasp of unconsciousness. 

That wasn’t even that bad, though. It wasn’t why Entrapta’s hair instinctively tightened around her, closing her in, leaving naught but a tightly woven ball of rope-like keratin showing from outside. It wasn’t why her… well, it may have been why her  _ organs _ ached, but that would disappear shortly.

It wasn’t the cause of the pain elsewhere, though. 

She’d been electrocuted before. It was painful, but progress was pain sometimes. It was all in good fun, all in good science, and what wasn’t worth it for the sake of that?

In the cramped darkness of the little hairball, she hugged her knees to her chest, pulling her mask down over her face despite her aloneness. 

She remembered now, recognized now. 

She’d come here on a garbage transport - the Horde’s systems of unmanned, disposable shuttles that were filled to their max and then shot into the distance, destined for permanently discarding their load in the one place that one cared about, not the Horde, not the princesses, not anyone else. The place where no would travel, the place where no one came back.

The place Hordak sent people that he thought had failed, like he’d tried to do with Catra that time before.

She was on Beast Island.

What had she done wrong this time?

_ What had she done wrong this time _ ?

Entrapta scowled, contorting her face. Her eyes began water, as if at some unknown irritant. 

Why? 

Did it even matter?

What good was it to keep trying this, if it never worked out anyway?

Entrapta was quickly coming to a decision. She’d thought she liked people. Other people. They were weird sometimes - okay, all of the time - what with their odd habits and everything. She never understood them entirely, or their customs, or much at all. But it had been good. It had been new, and fun, and an exciting field of study promised her. So, she’d left Dryl behind with a light heart, promising to return one day - but who was she to decline a new study opportunity when it presented itself?

That had been the biggest mistake of her life.

It wasn’t  _ study _ . It wasn’t  _ science _ . People didn’t act  _ logically _ . They did whatever they felt like, for no good reason, and she… she only got these stabbing pains in her gut because of it, pain that she knew from experience was not from any impact or physical trauma. 

This wasn’t  _ science _ . It was madness, tomfoolery, and it was dumb of her to have thought she could ever make sense of such irrational behaviours in the first place. Because it was them, right? It was, it… 

She would have tried to lie to herself, but… she knew the rules, the laws. Mathematically speaking, no. The Law of Averages declared, and the Law of Probability drove it home. Statistically speaking, it wasn’t them. It was  _ her _ . She was the issue, the flaw, the glitch in the system. 

The one would couldn’t understand, who never had, and who had been summarily thrust out because of it.

Her hair tightened around her farther, surely enough to instantly shatter the ribcage of any person lesser.

Why? Why had she left Dryl at all? What had she been missing? Her life back then had been…  _ amazing.  _ It had been perfect. It had been the happiest thing, every day, every hour, every moment. She’d relished it nonstop, day in and day out, forever.

Why?

What would she  _ not _ do for a chance to change that?

A subtle humming broke into her delirious thoughts.

Was this it, then? The… ominous, looming threats of this desolate place? Entrapta had never had parents, not in the biological sense. (Well, that wasn’t entirely true: she’d come from  _ somewhere _ , but she’d never seen them, to be more precise.) But she’d heard from Adora, and then from Scorpia… all about this ‘island’, the place from which none ever returned alive. No one had any evidence beyond a handful of old wives’ tales, but one was still true - among both the Horde and the Alliance, they all held this place in the utmost respect and fear.

This might be it - the impending death they all warned her about.

Entrapta couldn’t even bring herself to be frightened. Her hair tightened around her, nearly a purple ball of concrete. The only way anything was getting through her was to swallow her whole, and she didn’t see that happening.

Not that she was worried either way.

The humming grew louder, at first faraway and hollow, but growing with every passing second until it was a full-fledged roar she could hear even through her ear protection. The ground beneath her rumbled, and she could see flickers of blindingly white light struggling through her protective keratin shell. 

The ocean roared in protest, and she relaxed her coils, staring as the ocean itself retracted out to see, leaving exposed coastline in its wake. Above her head, the roaring came. She couldn’t look up. She tried. Even through her smoked lenses, the light was too bright, too powerful, too pure.

It was warming up, and the light trash around her was sliding around and started rising in the air.

She stared, puzzled, watching as it drifted gently upwards into the singularity that cast it’s blinding light for what had to be five hundred miles all around.

She stopped staring when she felt it, though - felt tendrils of her hair being tugged upwards. Gently at first, then with greater intensity. Before she could react it was yanking on her clothes, and her feet were losing traction on the ground.

Her self-preservation kicked into high gear as her hair flailed out in all directions, grabbing two pieces of garbage and four individual handfuls of varying wetnesses of sand.

“Oh  _ f _ -” the uncharacteristic word was hardly out her mouth before her grip on the topsoil was unceremoniously torn apart and felt herself rising into the air.

The singularity was closer, white and hot and all-consuming. Entrapta yelled, struggling in its grasp, but there was no longer anything to be done.

She twisted her face as the heat went over her, enveloped her, melted through her. Tingles tore over her, and she wondered if this was it felt like to be cut in half. She couldn’t even  _ mo _ -

_ POP! _

It was gone. The roaring, the burning, the sensation of weightlessness. Entrapta felt herself flying through the hair and barely had time to cushion her body with a pigtail before slamming back-first into a dark purple brick, gasping for her wind, wincing as her head snapped back from the suddenness of the impact.

She groaned, dizzy, stars twirling around in her field of vision.

Someone… someone was standing in front of her.

She blinked slowly, willing the figure to stop moving, to recoagulate back into a single form.

It beeped at her.

Entrapta yelled. Honest-to-goodness, downright, whole-heartedly  _ yelled _ .

“353-B.D!” she was on her feet in an instant. “How’re you here? How’d you get on this island? How’d you…” her voice trailed away as her surroundings finally sank in.

Purple brick walls. Her trusty pastry bot, who often made the smiley faces with the little cupcakes on the plate, just the way she liked them. The overwhelming scent of gasoline and motor oil permeating the air.

She was…

Impossible. It was impossible.

No. Nothing was  _ impossible _ \- it was only  _ unexplained _ .

She was  _ back _ . She was… she was  _ home _ .

The blinding light hadn’t done it. The burning heat hadn’t done it. Hitting the wall at ten miles an hour hadn’t done it. But now… now… 

353-B.D split into two forms again, and she swayed on her hair, toppling into a heap on the floor.


	2. Chapter 2

Entrapta hummed madly to herself as she flung herself from tree to tree, traversing the jungle’s canopies. There was no sign of human life anywhere to be found, at least not yet, and the noise of the jungle came only from as-yet-unseen insect and animal life.

So, for the time being, she was by herself.

And there were, as always, big questions to be asked and answered - perhaps, right now, bigger questions than she’d ever faced before. Where was she, exactly? What was with the - the freakin' (if it could be believed), the freakin’  _ stars _ .

Entrapta knew what stars were, though she’d never seen them in person. How could she? No one had, even. 

Everyone knew  _ of _ them, more or less. It was a tall tale, stuff of myth and legend, something that was spoken of in hushed tones to awestruck toddlers on the knee. Or, at least she assumed you’d use a hushed tone. Her robotic parents hadn’t been capable of it… but she’d still gotten the point.

Of course, growing up kind of took the mystique out the whole thing. They had been here once, thousands of years ago, and then had all disappeared one day, as if they were so many candles burning out. And that was all there was to it - the First Ones’ civilization had vanished with them, and there was nothing substantial more to be found.

And now… now they were  _ here _ . Gleaming, twinkling, glowing… up so high in the sky, sprinkling the canvas of the night with so many uncountable white dots of pure and perfect light, each one so beautiful that Entrapta was almost moved to tears. She just wanted to stand up, to stretch out, and to pluck down from the sky, hold it tight, hold it fast, safe against her - and take it back to her lab to cut it open for examination.

Everything yielded its secrets under the dissecting blade.That was the best part about it.

She stopped, again, as stared off into space, the stars in the sky as bright as the stars in her eyes for the first time in her life. Everything about it was so  _ amazing _ . There was so much data to collect, out there in space.

She had to get out there, sometime. Before she left. (If she left.) 

Not that she even knew where she’d be leaving  _ from _ anyway. What was this place, again? She squinted, surveying her surroundings once again, this time with a more critical eye and through her night-vision goggles.

The stars’ existence pretty much confirmed what had been her original theory: time. Time travel. She’d  _ gone back in time _ . Thousands of years… back to before the stars had disappeared. Before the catastrophe that had wiped the out the First Ones. Before…

... _ she could find the First Ones. _

_ ….SHE COULD FIND THE FIRST ONE’S TECH IN BRAND-NEW CONDITION. _

Her entire body vibrated with excitement, and she flapped her hands madly, unable to express her sheer joy in any other way.

There was a quiet, almost unnoticeable scuttling noise in front of her. But she did notice the rustling in the leaf bough hanging in her face, and turned just in time to look at it head-on.

The leaves rustled, paused, and then rustled again, a bit louder than before.

All of the sudden, a multicolored blur exploded out of the bough with a screechy scuttle, hurtling towards her face. 

Entrapta started, jumped, her hair flying in front of her, wrapping around the bundle in midair and freezing it a moment before contact - letting her eyes focus finally on two three-inch… claws(?), each one not more than a hairs’ breadth from her either eye.

The giant insect in the grip of her pigtail squirmed angrily, fluttering its wings and flailing it’s limbs and claws about. She watched, entranced. Some kind of thick, yellow goop oozed down the fangs, and on instinct she reached a gloved finger underneath to catch up a few of the dribbles.

The tape recorder was already out, and now she whipped out something else - a portable instant liquid analyzer. Made of paperboard, and designed only to be used once and then disposed of, she tore off the slip of paper and wiped it across her dampened glove.

The paper slowly turned an odd shade of brownish-orange. 

Entrapta hummed to herself. Then, dipping the tips of her hair into the droplets, she jammed the soaked tips deep into the gut of the insect. It  _ screamed _ , nearly as well as an insect can, and then suddenly… ceased moving altogether, save only for the frenzied twitching of its antennae to show that it was still very much alive. 

“Fascinating!” she murmured. “The unknown creature appears to secrete some kind of paralyzing venom… it seems to be carnivorous, for it tried hunting me! I can only presume that, had I not intercepted it, it would have carried out it’s normal hunting methods!” Pulling out her scalpel, she deftly sliced off the two claws and measured them more exactly with her tape.

“The two front claws are both exactly three and one quarter inches long,” she supplied, cutting one in half as delicately as possible. “They’re hollow, and appear to be connected to the creature’s venom-glands. It seems this creature would hunt by leaping onto the face of its prey, anchoring it’s claws into their eyes. Because the eyes are so close to the brain, the paralytic would set in very quickly. For me, based on my own bodyweight, my estimate is that I would have been completely paralyzed within the span of about ten seconds.” She paused, tapping her chin. “I wonder if it would have eaten me while I was alive or if it’s a scavenger that would have waited until after I had suffocated? I don’t know… hmm.”

She fiddled around for a while, plying the scalpel and recording at great length everything she found inside the creature, from the color of its guts to her longwinded theories on how what seemed to be its nervous system might have worked.

Eventually, though, there was no more she could do, at least not in the makeshift little platform she had up in the top of a tree canopy in the middle of an ancient jungle.

Wiping blue insect blood (and other assorted viscera of various colors) on her pants she stood up, stretched and peered around at her surroundings. 

She  _ had _ been traveling for a good while now, and there was still no sign of the first ones - at least not in the treetops. Maybe she should descend more to the base of the trees, actually. For all she knew, the First Ones had lived underground or something. (Wouldn’t that be a twist?)

She wondered what the geography of her location could tell her about things. This place was just as mountainous as Dryl was, more or less - though the peaks she could see cresting over the treetops were fewer and number. And there was the fact than an ocean was behind her, instead of the vast flatlands that the Mountains of Despair bordered.

It might be continental drift, she decided. Perhaps she’d been transported longer back than she previously assumed, and the continental plate bearing the flatlands hadn’t risen from the sea, hadn’t yet crashed into the other plate, hadn’t yet buckled up and formed the Mountains of Despair she called home.

Hmm. It was an interesting theory, but there were issues - for a start, because it would indicate that she’d traveled more on the order of  _ millions _ of years than  _ thousands _ , and she wasn’t sure if that was reasonable. First One’s technology was remarkably efficient, but to call it  _ that _ efficient seemed unlikely in the extreme.

Her attention was so occupied all sorts of other things that she didn’t notice the jutting metal in her path until the tip of her shoe slammed into it. Thankfully, the shoes were armor-plated and her hair safely caught her up before she made impact with the ground, but the distraction was still a curious one, and she turned about to examine the protrusion that had so endevoured to trip.

It was covered with muck from the jungle floor, and it half-absorbed by some tree-root that had enveloped it almost entirely. It was made of metal, though, and the edge was sharp and clean, far too precisely cut to have been produced by any sort of natural process. It had clearly been machined with  _ some _ purpose, by something.

It was certainly wedged  _ tightly _ in the dirt and grime, but not tightly enough, and she slid her hair down around it and into the soil, and soon enough it came loose with a sickening squelching.

Wetting the tip of her pigtail with spit, she polished the grime away as best she could, and her eyes widened as the all-too-familar patterns and engravings became clear.

“It’s more First One’s tech,” she breathed softly. “And right here, just on top of the topsoil?” Pulling her knife out again, she scraped a particularly stubborn patch sediment away. “Either it’s not been here long or… well, yeah. I must be getting close now.” She looked up and surveyed the jungle floor around her, hunting for any more readily visible signs of civilization.

Nothing. But she could just make the looming black mountains - which she had gotten much closer to now - and there was something distinctly uncanny and unearthly about them, the more she stared. It was the oddest sort of thing, as if it almost defied articulation.

She took a step forwards, and something grabbed her ankle with a surprising amount of force. In a split second it yanked her legs out from under her and high up into the air, leaving her dangling in the middle of empty space some thirty or forty feet off the ground.

“What in the…” she asked, peering up and seeing some sort crude snare-noose fashioned of vines wrapped around her leg and disappearing over a tree limb above.

There was motion on the ground beneath her. A figure, emerging from the bushes. A voice.

“What in the name of... “ 

It was a surprisingly … nervous voice, shaking and unsure of itself.

Entrapta contorted herself in the air, her hair sliding up and wrapping itself around the rope, freeing her foot, and holding her at a much more comfortable angle. (Her scalp was  _ made _ for this, okay?) She lowered herself down, a foot at a time, upside down, until her eyes were just about level with that of the newcomer.

He clutched his… spear? stave? rod? And held it between them, as if in an effort to protect himself.

“Well, hello there!” Entrapta announced, beaming. “Fancy meeting you here!” She paused for a moment. “Are you a First One, by chance? Or, wait, no, a First One wouldn’t call themself that, they wouldn’t know that they were first to anything. Are you a… One?”

The man frowned nervously. “I’m a Micah. I mean, I  _ am _ Micah. King Micah. Wait, I’m the one who ought to be asking the questions around here. Who are  _ you _ ?”

Entrapta grinned, shoving his stick aside lightly and waving her arms dramatically. “I’m Entrapta! Engineer, scientist, software developer… and, more recently --  _ time traveler.  _ You’re my first contact, in fact! In which case, forgive my rudeness! Hello Micah, hello, hello - hello from the distant future!”

* * *

Entrapta stirred, and for a moment, she was very confused as her eyes lazily fluttered open. She stretched, yawned, stretched again, and pulled herself up. It was… 

… it was… 

Rubbing her eyes with her palms, she blinked, taking in her surroundings again. 

It wasn’t even that anything was out of the ordinary. Everything was there.  _ Everything _ . Her nest, the thick layers and foundation of which had been fashioned primarily out of her own hair when it shed. Perched precariously in the rafters of the Crypto Castle’s leftmost basement room on what would be the third floor. Below, scattered on the floor, a random assortment of metal scraps, tools, and discarded soda bottles in approximately equal amounts, along with a single desk, on which was a pile of blue-and-white graph paper and a stack of writing implements.

If Entrapta had been one prone to swearing, she’d have sworn then.

The sleep was gradually fading from her brain now, and as her memory of the night before made itself known again, she grew increasingly unsettled.

“How is this possible?” her own voice almost frightened her. “It’s - it’s…”

It was pretty obvious what it  _ was _ , but that didn’t make it any easier to articulate.

“No, no, impossible.” It almost hurt to the say the word, and she physically winced as it left her mouth. “Not likely.” She snorted. “I must be… crazy. Maybe  _ Catra _ was right after all.”

“Entrapta!” a mototone computerized voice spoke aloud from down below. Peering over the side of the nest, her eyes widened.

“Unit #34-B.1!” she exclaimed. “You’re here! I mean, I mean, I guess... “ she swung herself down and landed on the floor with a mighty thump. “I don’t know what I mean, but you’re here!”

“I am,” the robotic soda dispenser observed calmly. “I wish to inquire as to whether you will be receiving your customary morning soda after last night’s… incident.”

Entrapta blinked, trying to steady the whirling thoughts in her head. “Wait, incident? What incident? Thirty-Four, there’s something I think that-”

“There was an implosion in the primary laboratory space,” Thirty-Four replied smoothly. “You were discovered moments later in the connecting hallway, suffering from a variant of blunt-force trauma. It was deduced that the most effective course of action would be to return you to your bed. That was sixteen hours ago.”

“-you should… wait. Whoa, whoa whoa.” Entrapta caught herself, feeling as a light bulb was going off inside her head. “Sixteen hours - blunt force trauma - implosion? I was… I’ve been  _ sleeping _ ?”

The robot stared. “Affirmative.”

“I’ve been sleeping,” she repeated. “Wait, but what about the past, you know, months and all?”

“Nothing has been out of order,” the reply came.

Entrapta stared. It… didn’t make any sense. It… well… 

Maybe it did make sense? Was it possible? It didn’t seem so. She could  _ remember _ things, from months past, Imp and Scorpia and Hordak and … Catra. That whole mess. How she’d thought she’d had, well, she wasn’t sure what she’d thought she’d had, but it was  _ something _ , right? It… 

It didn’t make sense. 

Or maybe it did?

She swallowed, breathing deeply. The scent of the Crypto Castle hit her like a ton of bricks. Maybe - maybe it wasn’t so crazy as she thought. After all, why would her very own robots lie to her? And no one came to the Crypto Castle anyway. And… and the whole thing was actually kinda weird, wasn’t it?

She knew there was some kind of war going on outside of Dryl. It had been forever now. But… no self-respecting army would call themselves the ‘Horde’, would they? It was a kind of silly name, in retrospect, like if she built something and named it ‘Machine’.

There was still that dull numbness, that icy sort of clog in her heart. It was too big, too acute, too  _ tangible _ to ever have been manufactured by her own brain in some feverish nightmare, was it?

Or wasn’t it?

This ‘Hordak’ she remembered… he really had just liked her for what she was able to bring to the table in terms of jointly running a laboratory. Scorpia, who had just liked her for  _ no _ reason other than sheer friendliness. Everyone had been so friendly to her, in fact. And it was so different from what she knew, what she expected.

A wayward traveler or two had sometimes found their way into the Crypto Castle in the past. Usually nothing more than the occasional mountain nomad or disgraced criminal fleeing justice. And often was the time they had appeared to be friendly, but it never worked out. Usually, they were just scared of her. One time, they had wanted to have sex with her. But no one came all the way out here for the express purpose of  _ befriending _ her. Even if nothing else, it was simply impractical, and Entrapta was, if nothing else, practical and pragmatic to a fault.

Maybe it made sense for her fevered brain to concoct some fantastical lie wherein so many of the things she had wondered after were summarily fulfilled and she’d hardly had to think twice.

“Maybe I just need to masturbate more often,” she muttered to herself, scuffing the sole of her show against the stony floor.

She didn’t want to believe. And a part of her didn’t. And yet… the more she stood her, her eyes and ears and nose taking in her surroundings, the familiar sights and sounds and smells of her childhood home… 

...it all sort of began fading away.

Evil Hordes, Beast Islands. Princesses. Hordak - well, what kind of a name  _ was _ Hordak, anyway? Especially with an army called ‘the Horde’. 

Entrapta ran her hands through her hair nervously.

And deepest of all, there was a part of her that  _ wanted _ to believe. Believe that none of it had mattered, that it had not even been  _ real _ . Because it wasn’t.

It was all some fevered dream in the wake of blunt-force trauma.

And the more she thought about it, the patchier her memories became, the dream melting away into the light of a new day like ice into molten lava.

“Will you be partaking of your morning soda?” Thirty-Four repeated.

Entrapta started, but then… relaxed. Her hair smoothed out, and she exhaled heavily before flashing a small smile. “But of course. Don’t I always?”

The robot paused, reaching into a compartment on it’s chest and producing a refrigerated bottle of some bubbly, milky frothy liquid. “Today, and yesterday,” it replied. “And yesterday’s yesterday, and the day before that. And all days before.”

Entrapta took a drink, the familiar flavor hitting her throat like a flash flood, washing away her doubt, crushing it into a little ball and burying it deep in a dark, untended corner of her mind. “Yes,” she replied. “I suppose.”

“I do not suppose. I  _ know _ .”

“You  _ would _ . It’s in the design I gave you.” She drank the rest of the bottle without even stopping for breath, and her throat burned and her body demanded oxygen by the time the last bit had disappeared down inside her.

“It wasn’t real,” she said aloud. “It wasn’t  _ real _ . None of it was real.”

It was… freeing, in a way. And yet, she didn’t feel exactly as exuberant about it as she thought she would. She shook her head violently, her hair reaching up and curling around the entrance to a ceiling ventilation shaft she hadn’t even needed to look for to know was there. (Yes, this place was definitely home.)

It  _ was _ home. Her home. Maybe she just needed… to work a little bit. Get her hands dirty, get her mind off things. She’d dreamed, and now all she needed was something to focus on, and soon enough, it would all disappear. She lived in the Crypto Castle, and no one ever came here (except by accident). She liked it that way. She was probably going to live out the rest of her life here, and she didn’t mind it one bit. She was a loner. She had no company, no helpers, no partners.

And she  _ liked  _ it that way.

The trip down to the laboratory areas was a strange one.

The inside of the Crypto Castle’s labyrinthine ventilation system was hardly anything new to her, but it all seemed so… fresh, in a way. Like it was something she’d not seen in months. She could close her eyes and even now recall the interior of the metal tubes from the Horde’s home base. They were smaller, rounder, and dotted here and there with sharp nails jutting out. They made loud echoes that amused Entrapta to no end. They rattled whenever someone was leaving the vehicle bay with a particularly powerful vehicle, because of the way the vents were connected to the exhaust dispersal systems in the bay.

She tried to keep her eyes from closing. If none of that was real, then there was no point in thinking about.

It was just … strange, feeling in this way over as something as stupid as a dream. She really  _ should _ have masturbated more.

It only took minutes to arrive at her destination, popping the grate out with her hair and more or less pouring herself and the rest of her train out onto the open floor.

The floor was… a mess. And not a mess in the way that she knew and understood and rather liked. It wasn’t just ‘unorganized’ or whatever, it was an  _ actual _ mess. The kind with bits of timber and stone brick and metal sheeting scattered in heaping piles, huge soot stains burnt onto every exposed surface, and a lingering smell of charcoal floating in the stagnant air.

There had been an explosion here.

Somehow, it made Entrapta feel… a little bit better?

Clearly something violent had gone down. The inside of the room was scorched, burnt and blackened. Her hair, sliding across the ground, picked up ash and came up black and flaky. She picked up a charred piece of paper with it - the only remnant left of what had once been a grand plan for something or the other.

It actually did make her feel better. It made it… easier to believe herself, to believe it when she told herself that everything that was actually okay. That nothing had happened. She just had gotten hit harder than she thought, or something.

It could actually make  _ sense _ , now.

She started working, almost by instinct. And in the work, it could actually be forgotten.

And it was.

It was easy for her, actually - a lot easier than even she had expected. Working was what she did, what she had always done. And that part of her, at least, had never changed, despite what had happened (or even  _ not _ happened) to her. She gathered rubble and sorted it, depositing useless chunks of brick or shards of wood that was closer to charcoal into a heaping pile in the corner, and anything salvageable, be it malformed metallic parts or scraps of potentially-still useful paper, went into the other corner.

She pushed the hulking, burnt-out remains of her large desk back against the wall - wondering what force had dragged it  _ away _ from the wall, given the soot-lines of the explosion seemed to indicate that something had, indeed, exploded  _ outward _ after all.

Perhaps some sort of miniature, short-lived but very powerful attractive force had been generated by whatever had then exploded. A magnetic field, an electrostatic field, heck, even a gravitational field. There wasn’t any way to tell right now.

She’d figure it out, though.

Piecing back together the remnants of machinery scattered about - not even so much with the intent to render them in working order, but rather the goal of piecing together from them a more sure and certain narrative as to what had happened - was quickly turning out to be a bit more complex than Entrapta was expecting. It was like a giant puzzle, but every time you put a piece in the correct place, someone threw a whole new box of puzzle pieces from a whole box right on top. It was just the sort of thing she liked, honestly.

And, suddenly, nothing else seemed to matter anymore.

Entrapta lowered her mask.

She didn’t raise it for another five-and-a-half hours. But the little robot wheeled its way into the now-much-cleaner laboratory anyway, and she couldn’t  _ not _ pay him any attention. It was pretty cute after all.

So she raised her mask, tossed her hairful of steel girders into an only mildly ungainly pile, and turned to face it.

“What is it?”

The robot blinked it’s indicator lights in her general direction. “Passersby”, it said. “Passersby have entered the Crypto Castle’s grounds.”

Entrapta lifted an eyebrow. “What? That doesn’t seem likely. Show me the security feed.”

The little bot extended a screen towards her that filled up with static, then abruptly cleared, revealing the inside of one of the Castle’s many winding halls. The hall wasn’t empty, though. There were people in it - three of them.

“Hey!” one of them exclaimed. “Adora, are you  _ sure _ this is the right way?”

Then they turned to face the camera, and their faces came all at once into full, crystal clear view.

And for the second time in less than a day, the unshakeable, immoveable, imperturbable Entrapta… jumped. 

And screamed.


	3. Chapter 3

“Excuse me, what?” Micah stared, open-mouthed.

Entrapta had already produced her notepad and pencil. “Tell me, now, do you First Ones not wear shirts of some moral principle? Is it a weather thing? Perhaps a religious reason? Oh, have shirts not been invented yet? Am I introducing them to you for the first time? Wait, have I just caused a paradox? Because if shirts weren’t invented before now but I’ve just given you the idea for them, where did the idea come from? Because I got it from my parental units, and they were programmed by someone, and the knowledge of shirts was passed down generation to generation, but who came up with it in the  _ first place _ , if they don’t exist now and I have just caused them to be created? Are shirts going to cease to exist now?”

She glanced quizzically down at the tanktop underneath her jumpsuit, clicking the buttons on her recorder with some urgency. “Hmm, well, either shirts have not (potentially yet?) ceased to exist, or else tanktops are exempt from the erasal, and were invented independently… maybe I should wait a few hours, in case it takes some time for space-time paradoxes to resolve themselves?” She jabbed in Micah’s direction with a lock of hair. “You! Tell me if my shirt suddenly ceases to exist. If you can remember to, actually… on second thought, my memory of shirts may disappear with them, and we would have no way of knowing that shirts ever existed!” She gasped. “What if I’ve already caused something else to disappear? How could I ever know? I should look into this more back in the-”

“I - I know what a shirt is!” Micah interrupted.

She paused, disappointed. “Oh. Well, keep it in mind, in case something happens, and the very concept of ‘the shirt’, as a nebulous thing, vanishes forever from the space-time continuum!”

“I… I don’t know anything about any space-time … continuum,” he replied, looking all around him, as if wary of being followed. “I… I’ve only been here. For. well, I’m not sure. Time - time doesn’t work the same way around here, I feel.”

Entrapta’s eyes widened. “ _ It doesn’t?! _ Oh, oh oh!” In an instant she was out of the binds of the trap, her hair coiled around him on the ground as she eagerly pressed her notepad into his chest. “Tell me, tell me! Tell me all about it! What’s different about the flow of time? Is it faster? Non-linear? Slower? Self-referential? This could confirm all my theories on the discrete nature of the time as a particle when it comes to the reference frame of the greater dimensional plane!”

“Wait, what, no- uh!” Micah stumbled back awkwardly, looking equal parts afraid and confused - or at least, Entrapta assumed that was what the face he was making signified. She had always been really bad at guessing that sort of stuff. “It’s not… I don’t…” he paused, and drew in a labored breath, almost as if he was in physical pain. “Can’t you  _ hear _ it?”

Entrapta stopped, tilting her head.

She heard nothing. “Hear what?”

Micah grimaced. “The - the signal! It’s… it’s  _ everywhere _ . It won’t get out of my head. No matter how high or low or far I attempt to travel, it’s always there, calling, calling…”

Unfurling her hair to it’s full length, and maybe growing it out a little farther while she was at it, Entrapta lifted herself thirty clear feet off the ground, listening as hard as she could. But there was… well, there was jungle noises. The whole place was abuzz with life of every sort, she was sure, screeching birds above, the low roar of waves crashing against the distant coast behind, the humming of various insects flitting through the dense, misty air. 

“Well, I don’t hear anything… unusual?” she said slowly, lowering herself back down. “But you say it’s all in your head - maybe I could have a look in there for you, if you wanted?” She grinned and produced her scalpel, still stained blue with the blood and viscera of that insect-creature. “It wouldn’t hurt a bit. I mean, at first it probably would, but it would stop soon enough.”

“What?! No!” Micah seemed positively shocked, taking his staff and swinging it in her vague direction as he took a step back. It smacked into her pigtails and she instinctively snaked her coils around it, yanking it free from his hand and hefting it up and down idly. It was actually pretty light. Then again, based on the way the bulbous growths at the end pulsed, she suspected it would not be too far amiss to pin some sort of magic onto it somehow.

“Then what?” she asked, curiously. “Opening you up  _ would _ be the most efficient way to deal with things, but I am totally open to other ideas if you’ve got some.”

“It’s not… it’s not like that.” He shuddered. “It’s different. It’s… I mean, the Signal. It comes the center of the island. It’s… I can’t even…” he sucked in a deep breath. “I can’t describe it. But it’s  _ there _ . And it’s  _ terrifying _ . Every day since I came here, I’ve heard it, calling me, beckoning me… it uses your fears, your insecurities, your worries… every day, every night, and with each passing solar cycle, it gets stronger and... “

“The center of the island, you say?” Entrapta cut him off. “Oh, by the way, your eyes are kind of watering. You might want to get that looked at, they seem pretty irritated.” She stroked her chin thoughtfully. “But that settles it! I’ve got to get to the  _ bottom _ of this! Plus there was that First One’s tech I found-”

“Oh, yeah, that stuff,” Micah replied shakily. “I’ve seen it around. And sometimes I see it and I think of my baby girl and my wife and it-”

“Yeah, yeah, coolio,” Entrapta said. “Hey, wanna come with me to this ‘center’? It sounds pretty awesome, plus I saw these pretty interesting paralytic critters before and we see another I have been curious if they were scavengers or predators - or maybe neither, and they kill for sport or to lay eggs in a warm corpse? So many possibilities!”

“You want to-what?” Micah blinked.

“I mean, with you pointing the way, we’ll probably get there faster, no?” she grinned. “And I’m just saying, if one of us gets killed by those little critters, then the other owes it to science to complete my studies on their habits. I would be honored to have my corpse used to catalog behavior of an undiscovered creature like that! Can you imagine?! Can you think of a better way to die?”

“A… few?”

“Ah, whatever! Can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, right? Now come on, let’s get going!”

“I would kill for an omelet right now,” Micah said longingly under his breath. “I mean, bugs are great and all, but the eggs they lay are kind of disgusting.” He straightened his loincloth determinedly, steeling his expression. “Still. You do what you have to do to  _ survive _ out here. It’s… man against beast. Against nature. Against this  _ Island _ , which is the most unnatural of places there could be.”

“Woah, really?” Entrapta tilted her head curiously. “Cool! That sounds intense.”

“Intense?” Micah turned away from her, facing deeper into the forest. “Girl, it’s the most intense thing you will find. The Island… it’s not any Island. It calls out to you, while you sleep, while you wake, every living moment. It’s a living thing, a monster of itself, and every second you remain here it seeks to devour you.” He sniffled. “Only… the memory of my beautiful wife and our infant daughter keeps me going now. They’re all I have left to live for. And -- and for  _ their _ sakes, I shall  _ not _ let the Island win!”

Entrapta frowned, curious as to why this fellow kept referring to what was essentially a piece of geography as if it had some kind of sentience - and why a sentient island would care about humans enough to be malevolent was another wrinkle to be considered. He really  _ did _ seem to have lost his marbles a little bit, didn’t he? Maybe there was a source of natural radiation on this island somewhere… if he was a First One, that could make sense, right?

Or maybe he just really knew something she didn’t? She crept closer to him as his back was turned, padding silently on her hair, her scalpel just millimeters from the back of his spinal cord. Just a few minutes and she could get to the bottom of all this…

“But come!” He spun around abruptly and she stumbled back, quickly swallowing up the eager knife back into the endless depths of her hair. He seemed to not have noticed. “You are the first  _ human _ I’ve had the good fortune of meeting! I will take you to my camp… you  _ do _ bring news of the outside world, don’t you? How goes the war? Has the  _ Evil One _ been vanquished? How are my daughter? My wife? How stands the castle Brightmoon? I…” he paused, counting on his fingers, then shaking his head. “I cannot remember exactly how long it has been, but a lot can happen in a few months, can it not?”

“I guess?” Entrapta shrugged. It seemed like a reasonable enough assumption. “But wait,” she asked, “You mentioned something about the castle Brightmoon? I - I wasn’t aware that that place was  _ that _ old?” She reached up and stroked her chin with a tendril of hair. She’d never  _ been _ to Brightmoon, but she was, in fact, aware of its existence, to some extent, if only because it had been mentioned fairly regularly by the roving bands of people that occasionally stumbled into the abandoned kingdom of Dryl. Still, to think that it was  _ that _ old… thousands and thousands and thousands of years in that way? It was certainly remarkable.

“What?” Micah looked confused now. “I’m not old.”

“Well, no,” Entrapta agreed. “You’re not  _ that _ old. Though I don’t know what that has to do with Brightmoon?”

“What doesn’t it have to do with Brightmoon?” he echoed. “I’m the  _ king _ of Brightmoon.”

“You  _ are _ ?” Entrapta’s eyebrows raised, as she realized how close she’d come to dissecting a member of a powerful royal family. (She’d been  _ so close _ … now she was really itching to get her blade wet. Royal families had that genetic connection to their runestone.  _ That _ would be some amazing data, if she could get at him in that way. She’d been curious about how that worked for a very long time. It was too bad she herself was, like, the sole exception to that rule, else she would have cut herself open for it a long time ago.) “Cool.”

“The  _ rightful _ king, yes,” he clarified, setting off into the wood. She kept up with him easily, his fleshy legs no match for the tremendous strides she could take via her twenty-foot pigtails. “But then… the Horde, they…” he closed his eyes for a second. “I can do nothing more now except survive, and hope to one day be reunited with my family and throne.”

“Sounds cool!” Entrapta enthused. “What progress have you been making, then?” She glanced around at the trees towering all around. “Is there some sort of especially dangerous obstacle in the sea I’m unaware of?”

“Progress?”

“Well, yeah,” she replied. “You know, towards... “ she frowned. “Were you not just saying you’d always wanted to leave her, or something? Go back to your First One friends? If you’ve been here for months… surely you’ve made progress in some way?”

“Ah, yes, of course.” He stroked his beard slowly. “Well, I have indeed established what I  _ believe _ to be a safe place to live. High enough to be safe from the beasts of the island, far from the deadly vines, insulated from the Signal by an outcropping. It’s the best of a bad situation.”

“I… see.” She nodded. “Is this wood particularly … unusable for some reason, then?”

“Not as far as I have seen?”

“Then have you not made effort to construct a boat - or better yet, a flying machine? Just imagine how cool that would be?”

He suddenly stopped, standing stock-still. “Well, I…” he shook his head. “The Signal, it… it disrupts one’s mind, fine companion. Especially when alone, I - I cannot think straight around here. It’s a miracle I can keep myself on top of my own mind enough to remember to  _ eat _ . I… I simply hadn’t thought of such a thing yet. And I  _ don’t _ imagine that was by accident.”

“I suppose, yes,” Entrapta drawled slowly. “This ‘Signal’ you keep mentioning-” she ducked under a particularly low, thorn-bearing branch. “-how does it work? What exactly is it? Have you collected any sort of data on it?”

“What you ask… what you ask is almost too horrible to tell,” he replied, his voice cracking. “Every moment I hear it, calling out to me.” His voice rose, taking on an odd sort of wailing quality. “Every night when I lie down to sleep, it dredges up my deepest insecurities, my most frightening worries, the fears I struggle to never recall. And it plays them for me, over and over, an endless blast of everything I fear most, and it… it calls for me, promising a sweet release into the void that… I  _ cannot _ take.”

Entrapta frowned. “I see.”

He turned to her, raising an eyebrow. “What? Have you no deep-seated insecurities, any care for the people you left behind, for the family that must now go on without you?”

“No, not really,” she replied. “I mean, there’s my robots! But they’ll be fine. And it’s not like I have to worry about them. I created them! They’ll always be my friends.”

“...oh,” her companion responded, seeming a little bit taken off guard. “Well, I suppose that is a… factor to consider?”

“Is it? I’m just here looking for First One’s tech, pal. Or, well, you wouldn’t know what a First One-”

“First One’s tech?” he repeated. “I mean… if you want, I can take you there. But the signal is strongest from the landfill.”

“Wait, wh-wh-  _ what _ ?” Entrapta stopped abruptly, her one pigtail lurching forwards and grabbing the man, spinning him around and bringing him up close to her face. “You know where it is? A landfill? The tech - you know  _ what _ it is? You know what a First One is?” She scrunched her brow. “How - how is that possible?”

“How - how is what possible?” he asked, craning his neck as far away from her as possible, which, given the amount of hair tangled around him, was not very. “I’ve - I’ve been trapped on this island for days - weeks! I know this place like the back of my hand now. Second nature!”

“Yes, but - hang on a minute.” She glared off into the distance at no one in particular. “You’ve been here a few weeks, then?”

“A couple days, yeah.”

"A couple days?"

"A good few hours, indeed."

She pushed her face close to his, so much so that her eyelashes very nearly fluttered against his skin. “What  _ time _ was it when you got here? Like, what time of year was it? What  _ day _ of year? What year in general?”

“Uh, uh, uh,” he stammered. “I don’t really remember exactly.” He frowned. “I mean, I don’t think I was paying much attention to them at the time, I was kind of... “

“Just wait right here!” she yelled, setting him down in the mud and shooting her hair off in the direction of a nearby tree. “I’ll be right back!”

Why had she not thought of this earlier? It seemed so obvious in retrospect. Seven moons, Etheria had, and multiple smaller satellites, all with wildly different orbits and sometimes very eccentric wobbles from season to season. It was the perfect way of keeping track of time, of triangulating one’s position… honestly, everything you could ever ask for from a collection of heavenly bodies. If she was provoked, she could also go into an extremely longwinded ramble about her theories for how the moons effected the planet’s energy fields - and magic - along with the mountains of data she’d collected on it.

Bursting through the top of the jungle canopy, she was taken by surprise again at sheer sight of the stars. And the way they twinkled, and how there were so many of them.

It was easy, sometimes, when she was down there on the jungle floor, to forget what had happened. And what was stretching above her now, the once endless black void of night now ablaze with countless brilliant sparks.

Producing her notepad and pen from the depths of her hair, along with a starsighter and compass, she began writing down the moons’ relative positions one to another. And the horizon, too.

Even as she worked, however, she began to realize that something wasn’t adding up quite right.

She double-checked her work, her measurements, and her equations. Triple-checked them, even, and tried solving them a fourth time using a different, slower method.

“How is this possible?” she breathed softly, staring at what had, at last, become her incontrovertible result. “According to this - according to the state of the sky, I didn’t go back in time at all! I’ve gone  _ forwards _ … but only by a year and a half.”

It had to be true. Most everyone  _ on _ Etheria kept track of the moons - since the moons, of course, were the cause of High Tide Season, which happened rarely, but on a regular schedule, too. Once every so often, many years at a time, the moons would eclipse one another and coincide. Sorcerers were fond of this time, it made their magic more powerful than usual. It  _ also _ brought three-hundred-fifty foot tides to every ocean, lake, sea, and even some larger ponds. There was always a lot of preparation to be done during  _ those _ times, even if you didn’t live near a shore. Rivers would flow the wrong way, following the tides, and precarious mountain ranges became even more prone to avalanches from the temporarily destabilized gravitational system.

Entrapta had a calendar for when these seasons were to occur. She had the marked dates memorized. And it was thus that she knew the date of  _ this _ , the current day, beyond any shadow of a doubt.

Only a year and a half difference? But… well, the stars! What had happened in the year and a half that she had skipped? And where were the Mountains of Despair and the Crypto Castle? 

Well, unless in the space of eighteen months, an entire  _ continent _ had been razed into the sea and a whole jungle sprang up in its stead… it was safe to bet that she had indeed been transported through space, too.

Transported through space, to some unknown island, while also being transported through  _ time _ by a year and a half, forwards, not back. And the stars were here, too, somehow.

“And I found that First One’s tech, just on a ground randomly?” Entrapta produced the chip again, studying it carefully. It was the real genuine article, no doubt about it. Then again, that fellow - Michelangelo(?) - had said this island was a First One’s landfill, and from there emanated his mysterious “signal”..So that made sense.

Hmm.

On the one hand, it was kind of confusing, and also a bit disorienting to realize she was in the future rather than the past, even if not by nearly as much as she’d thought.

On the other hand… 

_ There was a First One’s landfill here _ .

Which, to be honest, was all she needed to know. She could figure out how she got here and how to leave at a later date, for now, the promise of mass quantities of ancient advanced technology filled her entire soul with a glee so intense it would have rivalled molten iron.

“I’ve solved the mystery!” she declared loudly, sliding down the tree-trunk.

“Shhhhh!” Micah whispered harshly, holding his finger to his lips and his wand on guard. “Can you hear that?”

“No,” she returned, a shade more quiet. “I’m from your past, not your future. But it doesn’t matter that much. I’ll figure out the exact details when I’m planning to leave or whatever, if I need to.” (Would she? The Crypto Castle would still be there, even if she had - from the Castle’s perspective - left a year and a half ago for no reason. Maybe she could just stay here forever. Only time would tell.) She shook her head, grinning broadly and pointing aloft as she loudy declared:. “Take me to the First One’s land-mmmph!”

Micah clapped a hand over her mouth, cutting her off midsentence. The hair on the back of Entrapta's neck tingled all of a sudden.

Something was _wrong_.

* * *

Entrapta was staring, staring solidly into an impassive wall of solid stone.

She inhaled deeply, her thoughts racing madly as she struggled - once again - to sort everything out in her head.

At the same time, she wasn’t surprised at all. Of course, of course - was she being stupid?  _ Yes _ , the answer to that was  _ yes _ , of course. Psshaw. Dreamed it all. Had she really been genuinely trying to trick herself into believing that it had all been a dream - that none of it had happened?

If she was being honest, not really, no. She’d known all along it was a stupid thing to think. And she hadn’t really ever…  _ genuinely _ believed it. Maybe she’d tried, maybe she’d even wished it  _ was _ true - but she couldn’t deny reality. And  _ this _ was the reality, the whole - the whole thing. With the Horde. And Hordak. And - and the portal and Beast Island and… 

And the portal.

Had the portal been responsible for this? How was that… had - had her… had Hordak completed the portal experiment without her, then? Or Catra or… or someone. And she’d been… 

She blinked, looking down at the security feed looping on the screen.

She’d been sent back… in time? And in space. Well, portals  _ were _ supposed to move you through space, but not like  _ this _ . And it hadn’t exactly been intended for use as a time machine, either. Why  _ here _ , though, and why  _ now _ ? Had it… no, it couldn’t have just sent her through time. She’d have seen her past self by now, probably. It must have done something even more drastic - rewound time? Backtracked the progress of the entire continuum? 

If only she could somehow see the  _ readings _ , the energy output and the radiative patterns from the portal. There would surely be some equation linking the two - the portal’s behavior and how far back it had pushed everything. How far back it had pushed  _ her _ .

Did everyone else know and remember like she did? It didn’t seem like it. Her robots, sentient though they were, showed no sign of it.

“Entrapta,” the robot spoke aloud. “Estimated time until the interlopers have breached castle grounds is two point two minutes.”

Why  _ her _ , then? Had she merely  _ wished _ hard enough,  _ wanted _ bad enough - had the universe taken pity on her and decided to give her another chance?

No, no that was stupid. The ‘universe’ was not sentient, nor was it capable of doling out any emotion. Wishing was great, but had no effect on physical reality. 

It must have been some complex reaction between the portal’s unfortunate meltdown and … perhaps some DNA she had left behind on the scene. Shed hair or dropped skin cells or… well, anything.

For the first time since waking  _ up _ in her childhood home again, Entrapta could wholeheartedly believe that which she was telling herself. Not that it made anything any easier, nor still informed her as to… what on  _ etheria _ she was supposed to do from here.

“The interlopers have breached castle grounds”, her robot spoke for a third time, showing her an update security feed.

Entrapta frowned, her memory flooding back to her - of a day just like this one, a year and a half since gone by. A day when three people had come by to visit her, to recruit her, to introduce her to the world outside the Mountains of Despair.

To use her. To beg her for her skills and dump her at the Fright Zone the moment she didn’t fit in. Only for Hordak to see her, to... she took a deep breath…. to fool her. Into helping with the portal. Into believing there was a - a partnership, of sorts.

And then to dump her on Beast Island first chance he got.

Entrapta sucked in a determined breath, her fists balling in her rubber gloves. She wasn’t sure  _ how _ she’d ended up here. Nor did she ascribe much value to ‘destiny’ or ‘fate’ in general. But she sure as anything knew what she was supposed to do  _ next _ .


	4. Chapter 4

The unusual sound of footsteps echoed in in the hallways of Castle Dryl.

Entrapta’s heavy steel-toed and metal-plated boots banged heavily, for they banged against the floor. It was not something they did very often. Her hair flailed in the air behind her life a flag as she ran, almost tripping with inexperience.

But she steadied herself against the wall and took off again, running. Through a route in the castle very scarcely traveled she needed to go. Or, well, it was a route she’d never really used  _ before _ . Which was now - now  _ was _ before.

It was the main entrance. The front doors, as it were, into the castle keep. In all her approximately thirty years of life she’d never really even  _ needed _ to go out at any point. Which wasn’t to say she hadn’t - but it had been optional. Really, she could have stayed inside alone the whole time. Forgotten about First One’s tech altogether and just stayed focused on other branches of research. She would have made the same discoveries as they had  _ eventually _ .

And in retrospect, she was really starting to wish she had. And maybe - just maybe, this portal and time-travel fiasco was her chance to do just that.

Would that choice - changing the past so brazenly like that - have any negative consequences on the stability of the space-time continuum? 

...maybe. Maybe not.

But she could do research on that possibility later. And fix it later, if she needed.

She took a breath and pushed the broad castle doors open with her hair. 

Three stunned young folk stared at her, and she set her jaw firm behind her mask, which she hadn’t even realized she’d flipped down at some point. It just happened without her thinking about it sometimes.

Behind the mask, though, she realized that it was her old one again, the one she’d had since her childhood. Somehow, the realization made her feel… better about the whole thing. It was always easier to face down the world with the trusty metal faceplate betwixt her and the living world.

The three people before her stared in shock.

Bow was the one who managed to speak up first. (She was fairly sure that was his name. It’d been months since she’d seen any of them now.) “P-princess Entrapta?”

_ Princess _ .

Entrapta lowered her eyebrows behind her mask. The  _ last _ time she’d been called ‘princess’ had been by  _ Hordak _ , hadn’t it? He’d always had that weird way of saying it, before she’d managed to convince him to drop the stupid title and just use, you know, her actual name. Hearing it again… 

“No thank you,” she said, resolutely, firmly. She was met with a collective gasp and three shocked expressions, even as she tried to push the Crypto Castle’s heavy steel doors shut. “I’m not interested.” That was an understatement.

“Wait, what?” Glimmer asked indignantly. “You’re not her? Well, go get her, then! I’ll have you know that I’m crown princess of Brightmoon, and I  _ demand _ an audience with-”

“Glimmer,” Adora quietly interjected. “Maybe we ought to-”

Entrapta had never been more thankful in her life for her mask. It was… it was weird. She  _ hadn’t _ seen these three for months. Heck, she hadn’t even thought about them for nearly as long, not between Scorpia and Hordak and the whole portal thing and Emily and her own experiments and, well, everything - and yet, looking at them was… 

She grit her teeth. “No,” she replied. “That’s me. I’m her. I’m - Entrapta. That’s me.”

Adora looked over at her, and Entrapta glanced up and down her quickly. She wasn’t so droopy this time as she had been back when Entrapta remembered this happening before. She never had had the chance to really figure out how that had happened last time. And she  _ was _ still curious, but - but, no.

But nothing.

“Oh, then you  _ are _ her?” Glimmer demanded, taking a step forward. “Good.” She gestured disgruntledly back to the castle courtyard. “Good, I mean, have you seen all the stuff out here? What even is all that stuff out there? If it wasn’t for me, I’m pretty sure we’d all be impaled on spikes at the bottom of some pit or something.”

Entrapta frowned. “I am aware that’s there, yes. I’m also aware of what you’re here for - and my answer is  _ no _ .”

“Huh?” Bow exclaimed. “How can you say that? But you’re like,  _ so amazing  _ and-”

“You know what we’re here for?” Adora cut in. “How is that possible?”

“No?!” Glimmer balled her fists. “How can you say  _ no _ ? We didn’t come all this way to-” she ran her fingers through her hair “-okay, okay. What’s the issue? What do you need help with for us to change your mind? I doubt you can be more stubborn than Perfuma about this. Where’s the Horde at?”

Entrapta’s hair frizzed instinctively, curling around and planting itself more firmly on the ground and pushing her up into the air. Now she was looking down at the three of them, rather than up.

“There’s no Horde,” she replied calmly. “No one comes this far. And I don’t leave.”

“You can’t say that!” Bow exclaimed, a hurt look crossing his face. “We  _ need _ you, you’re the smartest person I know! I mean, I don’t actually know you, but…. I mean, I know  _ of _ you and-”

“You need me,” Entrapta repeated. Oh that was true, she internally mocked. They needed  _ something _ , but she wasn’t it. It was only what she could  _ do _ , wasn’t it? And as soon as she fulfilled that purpose - well, she’d lived this once already, hadn’t she? She knew better than anyone how this was going to play out in the end. “Sorry. But I’ve got some experiments that I really am wanting to do, and I just haven’t got the spare time. I’m sure you’ll find someone else, though. Good luck!”

That, at least, wasn’t entirely a lie. There  _ were _ experiments to do. For goodness’ sake, she’d built a portal that had straight-up rewound time itself around her. What  _ wasn’t _ there to experiment on? She hadn’t even put that much thought into it and already at least five separate things had popped into her head.

“No, wait, look,” Adora interrupted. “We’ll - we’ll help you finish your stuff, and then you can come with us? Or maybe I should-” she drew her sword and held it aloft. “For the-”

“No, no, no!” Entrapta cut her off. “That - that won’t be necessary. I’m well aware of your whole shtick.” She frowned deeply behind her mask. “Just go.”

“Wait, how do you know-” Adora seemed shocked. “But - but - we can be your friends and-”

“I’m not looking for ‘friends’.”

“Oh, come on now!” Glimmer burst. “You can’t just turn down our offer of alliance like-”

“I don’t need ‘allies’.”

“Please?” Bow asked, smiling, though the look in his eyes betrayed some sort of other feeling that Entrapta could not quite pinpoint. “You’re - you’re the smartest person I’ve heard of. I want - I have so many things I want to ask you! We could work together, research - be lab partners!”

Entrapta’s back stiffened. “I’m not  _ interested _ in partners.”

They didn’t move quickly enough for Entrapta’s liking this time. Her hair roiled and she shot up ever farther, rearing to her full height, her tendrils snaking forwards and gripping three pairs of shoulders. Unceremoniously she turned them around, patted Adora on the hair poof, and pointed down the mountain trail leading away. 

“If you head off in the northwest, you’ll hit Salineas after three weeks’ travel. You’ll have better luck with her than you’ll have with me. I am  _ not _ interested.” She gave them a hefty shove, sending them stumbling away, save for Glimmer who righted herself with a shower of purple sparks and a withering glare.

“C’mon, guys,” she groused. “This was a stupid idea anyway - I did say that, didn’t I? You can never trust… these hermits. Let’s go.”

Entrapta stood in the doorway and watched them walk away, shooting her longing looks over their shoulders at least twenty times between Bow and Adora.

And then they rounded the bend, and were no longer visible. She slammed the castle door, leaning desperately against the back of the door as her life itself depended on it.

A peculiar shudder passed through her spine, and she involuntarily sank to the floor, a scratchy lump welling up inside her. Her faceplate stared impassively into the dark hall, illuminated by only by those opaque red-glowing viewports. 

She stood up, wiping furiously at her nose before bursting into a coughing fit, her throat clogged with phlegm and .mucus.

But no longer - no longer.

If there was any time more appropriate for her to forget all else and throw herself into her work, it was now, after all. She had  _ traveled through time _ . And now that she wasn’t being stupid and denying it… there was so much she wanted to do, wanted to find out, wanted to study… on her own.

Well, yes, of course. It would be fine.

Everything was going to be fine now. As improbable as it seemed, the most unlikely thing she could have thought of had come to pass. She’d been given a second chance through life, and this time she was making the right decision. Screw “other people” and their whole deal, the things they offered and never repaid. She didn’t need them! She had her own pursuits, and while the sciences couldn’t be said to  _ care _ about her, exactly, she got results.

Speaking of results, she was ready to begin aiming for some in record time.

She tested the debris from the implosion in the basement in a dozen different ways, from trace particle analysis to scanning for foreign genetic material; looking for clues as to the source of the disturbance. She took a sample from her own body and compared it to some fingernails that she dug out of the trash heap; looking for any sort of change the time-traveling might have done to her on a physical level. She played back the contents of her emergency memory-loss recorder, taking notes as comprehensively as possible; looking for any trace of potential upset in the space-time continuum that might have come before.

Minutes merged into hours and hours melted away. The daylight and nighttime outside blurred into a repetitive cycle, flashing by faster than she could recall or cared to count. 

She tried her hand at cracking the formula that would explain why she got rewound to  _ here _ , of all times. It was difficult, without the exact output of the portal on hand to measure against. To that end, her mask remained permanently lowered and her eyes forgot what it was like to perceive the world without the red-tinted glass before them. Three scale models of the portal she recreated from memory, and a single full-size prototype, too. The walls of the castle were covered with endlessly scrawled equations that stretched on and on down the endless halls. 

Behind a barricade, she test-fired the prototypes, taking painstakingly exhaustive note of their exact behavior. Variables were filled in, and questions were answered. The entire universe was beginning, bit by bit, to be laid out before.

She remembered Hordak’s curt tales of planets in planes beyond this one. How he had expressed that that was a surety simply because planets could not spontaneously form in a void like the one that Etheria resided in.

Drills constructed for excavating ancient technology were repurposed and vast stores of thick, goopy oil was plumbed from the Mountains of Despair. The iridescent slime was reacted and refined down to a clear, imminently flammable syrup that boasted thousands of thousands of megatons of stored energy. 

Clear night skies glowed like daylight over Dryl, as aircraft; strapped to little more than embiggened rockets, were shot out every which way in her ever-expanding probes into the nature of reality itself.

The heavenly bodies yielded their samples to her autonomous expeditions. Etheria’s largest moons had geological makeups matching that of the planet itself, down to the last mineral ratio. Smaller ones had wildly varying compositions that she had never considered before. Truly, Hordak may have sold her a load of rubbish, but one thing he  _ had _ told the truth on: there was more to the universe than it seemed.

The source of daylight; burning hot as it’s surface was, nonetheless spat out enough of a solar wind for her measure it with some degree of accuracy. Combusting hydrogen; compacted into a dwarf-sized body that broiled with insane heats and cast off the light that gave Etheria life.

These all had come from  _ somewhere _ , and she was going to find out. Find out what the  _ truth _ was about the universe, existence, reality, and everything.

Daylight cycles melted one into another, seasons shifting, as she worked ceaselessly, tirelessly.

The vibrations of Dryl’s newly-expanded power generators - twelve recently-invented cold fusion reactors all in a row - could be felt for miles around as she cast the switch, over and over again, throwing the portal recreation into overdrive. She scowled, knowing well enough that it would never go anywhere without the Sword of Protection.

She scowled, but then she cracked her knuckles and got to work. So the First One’s tech needed a specific key? Well, ancestors could go off, but she was going to carve herself a whole new door if that was what she needed to do. 

Backtracking through her work, everything related to the First One’s research, based on their technology or that was patched together through their knowledge was summarily torn out and discarded. If they’d done it before her, then she could do it now.

Keys were no use, and locks were no obstacle, and previous methods were of no importance. Not if you intended to burst wholesale through the wall at its strongest point.

And in all the frenzy of her hurry and flurry and work, she never stopped; not once. Not to doubt herself, not to think, not to feel. 

She had no use for that stuff either.

* * *

“We have to  _ go _ ,” Micah said urgently. “Do you hear that?”

Entrapta paused awkwardly. Then shook her head - the forest was dead silent around them, in fact. Not even the buzzing of the insects that had seemed so omnipresent two seconds before was present. She could even so far as hear her own blood pumping inside her ears.

“That’s the problem,” he continued urgently. “It’s the  _ poukas _ . When they’re out hunting, everything hides. We have to - we have to run. Else we’ll be nothing but skeletons in a minute.” He shifted his grip on his staff and quickly turned about, running off into the underbrush.

“Wait, come back here-!” Entrapta exclaimed. She grinned in a sort of lopsided, half-amused way. Rising up on her hair, she caught up to him in two giant strides, scooping him up and lifting him clear of the muddy soil. “Where are we going?”

“Hey-wh-” he looked around disconcertedly before looking behind them and up at the trees before pointing off to the left. “That way! Hurry!”

Her hair could cover ground vastly more easily than could her short little legs. She wasn’t sure where they were going (nor was she exactly sure what they were running from), but at least for now she decided to follow this fellow’s lead. He  _ was _ supposed to take her to the very interior of the island, after all, and so maybe this was leading in that direction. That would be much appreciated.

As she ran, though, the odd silence of the jungle was slowly replaced by some sort of ruckus going on behind her. No, it was pretty unmistakable - she was definitely being chased now. 

“Faster!” her companion urged. “They’re gaining on us!”

Was that even possible? She peeked behind her and quickly discovered that, yes, it certainly was.

“What are those?” she demanded, watching the swarm of creatures - no larger than house cat, each of them - pouring out of every nook and cranny of the jungle in their pursuit. Their fangs glistened wet in the dim light and their snarling intermingled into a single earth-rumbling roar that promised only death and maiming to any who dared to confront them.

“It’s the poukas!” Micah returned, spinning his wand about in the air and then shooting a chaotic burst of purply energy from it’s bulbs in the vague direction of their pursuers. Entrapta’s widened, seeing the charred splotch it left off the ground. Subconsciously, her hair grew ever longer, supporting even longer strides and sharper turns as it snapped out and coiled itself around the nearby trees, practically flinging them from branch to branch. “They’ll run us until we drop dead, that’s how they hunt! They’ll chase us in circles in shifts - this group is only like half of the whole pack.”

“Well, you’ve been here for a while by yourself? Have you never performed any other studies?”

Micah grimaced. “They fear the Signal, as all living creatures do. We have to make it the center of the island, and you  _ can’t _ let them make you go in circles!”

Entrapta lowered her faceplate determinedly. “That won’t be a problem. Just hang on tight - it’s going to be a bumpy ride!” Her hair splayed away in all directions, latching onto a tree and abruptly yanking the both of them upwards. Progressively skinner branches bowed beneath their weight as she rapidly scaled up into the treetops, but the ends of the pigtails had frayed out - and so long as each little branch could withstand the weight of just a single hair (or two), then they were going to be just fine.

“They can climb too!” Micah warned, firing more magical bolts from his staff. “You’re not leaving them behind like this!”

“That’s not the point,” she replied, a hysterical grin marking her face, adrenaline pouring through her bloodstream and seeming to grant her an entirely new leash on life. It was so  _ exhilarating _ , the rush, the intensity, the mortal peril of life and limb. She pointed to the mountaintops cresting through the clouds in the distance. “Now there’s a goal! The mountains are the center, right? And I can see them… no getting turned around now. Those little suckers will  _ never _ outrun me now.”

Her hair spread out before the wind, catching up the current and egging her on ever as she skimmed across the treetops. The snapping and growling was still behind them, but she looked behind her and flashed her blood-stained knife, eyes gleaming, mentally daring any of those creatures to get within stabbing range. They did have such  _ unique _ -looking physiology, and she was never one to turn down an opportunity to learn.

The mist was below them, mingled with the lower layers of trees and thick foliage that kept the ground so damp. Up here? Up here, the sky was clear, the sun was shining, and a bracing sea breeze swirled around them, seemingly egging her on farther and farther. Entrapta had never been one for the outdoors, not when she could be holed up in her lab doing science, but this was - this was different. Everything was new here, undiscovered, waiting to be catalogued and sampled and cut apart for research. And she positively could  _ not _ wait to be the one who did it, who wrote the book on all there was to be discovered on this itty bitty island a year in the future.

She laughed behind her mask, an uncouth riotous sort of sound that ended abruptly in a snort as she realized that it had now been quite some time since she’d heard any sounds of their pursuers.

She stopped, and almost immediately was forced to scramble her hair for more sturdy footing as she did so.

“Are they gone?”

Micah frowned. “I… I think so?” he shook his head. 

“Sheesh,” Entrapta replied. “That was something. So interesting! Though I have to wonder, how on earth did you deal with those guys before me?”

“I  _ did _ try to tell you before.” He crossed his arms. As long as you don’t let them corner you or run you in circles, you can get close enough to the Island’s center - the Signal - to really start bothering them. At that point, it’s easier to shake them.” He shuddered. “Once you get close enough to the center, though, you’ll notice. Nothing will chase you far into it, and nothing will live there voluntarily, either. Nature itself tries to keep away, you know?”

Entrapta shrugged, gently navigating them both a downward path through the branches to the jungle floor once again. “Nature is not a sentient construct, and evolution is a blind and directionless process. It can’t  _ try _ to do anything, that ascribes it facets it cannot inherently possess.”

Micah frowned, steadying himself on his staff as she deposited him on his feet once more. “Just you wait. You’ll see what I mean soon enough - nothing lives on this Island long and isn’t bothered by it.” His voice trailed off ominiously.

“Okay!” Entrapta’s tone was as cheerful as ever. “Well, onward, then? Towards the center? After all, if it’s so darn bad for you, then surely you want to get to the bottom of it? We’ll dissect it or - or whatever the appropriate term would be for whatever it turns out to be.”

Pinching the bridge of his nose, he groaned. “I cannot in good conscience let you wander off by yourself, I guess. I - I will guide you. I don’t believe you’ll be able to interfere with the Signal, but-”

“You can interfere with  _ anything _ ,” she cut him off, teeth flashing in a wide grin. “Everything is relative and if it exists, then it can be meddled with.”

“I - I am not sure if that is the case, but…” he shrugged. “I will accompany you nevertheless.”

“Well, alright, then. To the center of the island - to the  _ tech dump _ .”

“I really don’t know what you think you’re going to be able to do with all that stuff, but yes, if you so badly wish it.”

“Just you wait and see pal. Just you wait and see.”

The island wasn’t that big, at least in relative terms, when compared to the entire supercontinent that made up ninety-nine percent of Etheria’s landmass. That being said, in  _ absolute _ terms, it was still pretty darn big, even considering the extra-large strides Entrapta could make atop her pigtails. Wading through mud was not the easiest thing, and yet the branches of the jungle grew ever thicker and a more solidly entangled mass as they traveled farther inland, making it harder and harder to simply ascend into the trees.

The mountains on the horizon nonetheless moved inexorably closer as they continued the trek, stopping on occasion to make a meal out of some hapless animal that had been a fraction of a second too hesitant to run from Micah’s magical blasts. Entrapta’s hair had lurched in that window, and it was all over.

One vivisection later, and a rather pleasant meal was had, all things considered. Entrapta had, of course, used her knife to neatly dessicate her portion into the tiniest of chunks, and in her opinion the flavor of the smallness was enough to override the rest anyway. And the little bitty chunks were just so cute!

It was very interesting, the conversation that eventually formed as they trekked inwards. A few hours he’d been here, Micah said - and his primary goal ever since arrival had been to return to his family or whatever. He seemed really passionate about that, even detailing one particular time he had tried to swim off the coast under his own power.

When she quizzed him again on the possibility of felling any of these mighty trees and constructing a raft of sorts, he again brought up the Signal’s hampering effect on his mind. And one time, too, it did happen - sort of. Entrapta still couldn’t hear anything - much less this crippling insecurity the Signal was supposed to use to get to her - but all of the sudden, Micah had frozen up, gotten a distant look, and then clutched his hands over his ears and nearly fallen over.

Entrapta had carefully watched him as he had writhed in pain on the ground, taking thorough notes of his various physiological and psychological symptoms, recording them and then theorizing at length about possible causes, both psychosomatic and not. There certainly was a lot of data. She noted the increased internal temperature on her rectal probe, the nausea and loss of motor coordination, the sweats and inability to complete simple mathematical tests or respond to all but the most basic verbal cues, among other less interesting things. It was not terribly dissimilar to a seizure, she decided. Different, yes, but thinking of it in those terms might yet reveal new avenues of research.

Eventually he’d recovered, though, and so she’d put that particular branch of study on hold until a later date as their travels had resumed.

Darkness eventually caught up with them again as the sun came and went, sliding below the horizon, bringing the pitchy blanket of night overtop of them once again. Entrapta wasn’t tired - not yet - but her traveling companion complained of fatigue and, well, she  _ did _ need an opportunity to go through her collected data from today and organize it as well as develop new theories and thought experiments… so, she agreed to stop at last. At Micah’s request, they selected a particularly broad tree and climbed up into it’s branches to make themselves comfortable for the night.

As was her habit, she produced her knife and deftly whacked off the entirety of one of her pigtails, letting it flop away before she grabbed ahold it, planting herself atop the squirming severed bundle to keep it from escaping off somewhere.

Micah jerked, his eyes widening and seeming oddly startled. “Doesn’t that  _ hurt _ ?” he asked, warily. “I mean, it’s like… got the whole… alive thing going on with it?”

“No,” she replied, shrugging and bringing her knife through again on the other side this time. “It’s just hair. I mean, it wiggles a lot, so it’s kind of tricky, but I’ve gotten the hang of it.” She laughed, watching as her pigtails grew under her hands even as she spoke, first two feet long, then four, and six and eight and twelve. “And I  _ can _ grow it back as fast as I want anyway. Falls under the whole ‘control’ aspect. Makes it pretty easy.”

The knife came down again, and more purple mass fell away, writhing back and forth like a dying animal. Micah flinched away from it when it touched him.

“Don’t worry about that,” she explained. “It won’t keep it up forever. Eventually, it’ll stop moving and get stiff, kinda springy. That’s when it’s dead!” She grinned. “It makes a great nesting material, for sure. Then I can just curl my living hair beneath me, and it’s really the best thing ever. Did I mention it’s also fireproof?”

“Ah, I… no,” he replied. “You hadn’t.”

“I mean, it’s not  _ technically _ fireproof in the way you’re probably thinking, but since I can control it, it’s basically impossible for it to actually  _ burn _ . I can just knot it together like so, and, well, fires get snuffed out. They need oxygen, ya know?”

“I see.”

Entrapta frowned. She had never had anything - well, no, any _ one _ was probably a better term - in her nest aside from herself, as long as she could remember. The fact that there wasn’t anyone  _ to _ be inside it at Dryl was probably important but… huh. She could still feel a bit of hesitation creep through her for some reason before she shoved it off. 

“I’m not going to sleep anyway,” she said. “You’re welcome to it, I’ve got data to sort through.”

“Not going to sleep? You’re not going to be function tomorrow. This island takes a lot out of you.” As if on cue, he yawned.

Entrapta stared, unimpressed. “Eh, I slept just two days ago, I’ll be good for a few days yet. Don’t you worry about me, hmm?”

He opened his mouth, but then shut it without saying anything. “Whatever you say.”

“Good!” she cheered. “Now, if you’ll be quiet, I’m going to be busy for a while. Don’t bother me. Thanks!”

“Umm… yes? I guess?” He didn’t seem particularly convinced nor entirely well at ease with the nest, instead resorting to poking it gingerly with his staff for several minutes before curling up just beyond it, on a hard tree branch directly. How irrational that was, Entrapta thought. Oh well, more power to him, then.

Producing the full extent of her collection of tape recorders, she carefully reviewed them all, special attention being paid to her original primary recorder - the one which, even now, held recordings from times before the time travel incident. It didn’t hold much - of course, at the time, she’d had no way of knowing what, if anything, was going to happen. So it was understandable.

And now, what did she know? A lot of things, and yet… a very, very little, too.

She watched the stars, up above, getting distracted from her thoughts by the giant star-spangled night sky stretched above them. Pushing her mask away from her face, she climbed farther up into the tree, higher and higher - up to the very top, thrusting herself out of the topmost foliage for an unfettered view of the sky.

It was so… 

So  _ promising _ .

Promising of lands to explore, previously unexplored. Promising of experiments to run, previously undone. Promising of knowledge to learn, previously unlearned. There was just  _ so much _ there, wasn’t there? And it was all just - just waiting for her to discover.

Time travel was one thing, but this? This whole new universe that was just suddenly… there?

Picking up her tape recorder, she cleared her throat. “Time travel log twelve, day three. I - you know, I’ve been thinking, and there’s just so much to be done here. I don’t think I’m ever going to need to go back again.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hnnnng.
> 
> There's so much potential here. I cannot *wait* to get into it all. This is going to be so much fun.


End file.
